Modifying your document

In this movie, I'll show you how I created the document that you see before you on screen.I'll give you a rough sense for what you can do in Illustrator and also give us a chanceto save our changes in the very next movie.The name of the file is 8-page newsletter. ai is found inside the O1makedoc folder, andyou can see that I've label each of my artboards with these big numbers.And each one of the numbers is exactly centered on the page.I am excited to show you how I did that because it's a really cool technique.So I am going to starts things off by going up to the Select menu and choosing the AllCommand, or you can press Ctrl+A, or Command+A on a Mac, that's going to select all eight of those numbers.

And then I'll press the Shift key and Click on the 1 in order to deselect it, and youcan see that is no longer selected because its baseline is disappeared.And the baseline is the imaginary line upon which all text sets, so in other words wehave everything but the 1 selected.And I am going to press the Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac, in order toget rid of everything.And I'm take this one is just could want to them to move them to an arbitrary location.So let's start things off by centering the one, and you do that by going up to the Controlpanel at the top of the screen, go over here to the right-hand side, and you'll see wordAlign, go ahead and click on it.

And then we'll go and change is Align to Option from Align to Selection to Align to Artboard.And now I'll click on each one of these Middle Align Icons both Horizontal Align Center,and then Vertical Align Center.And then I'll go ahead and hide the Align panel and that looks a little high to me.So I am going to press Shift Down arrow--let's say two times--in order to nudge the number downward.Now I'll go up to the Edit menu, and I'll choose the Cut Command or press Ctrl+X, orCommand+X on the Mac.

To go ahead and move that one to the clipboard, and now I'll go up to the Edit menu and chooseone of the coolest commands inside the software paste on all artboards which has a gigantickeyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+ Alt+V, or Command+Shift+Opt+V.And then we'll go ahead and paste that number onto every single page.And all you have to do is switch to the Type tool, which I can get by pressing the T key.But I should say here you may notice that on your toolbox the T is further down.

That's because you're working with a Single Column toolbox, and you can switch betweenthem by clicking on this whole Double Arrow Icon.I have to work with a Double Column toolbox because my screen's not tall enough to accommodateall of the tools otherwise.Now I am going to switch to the Type tool, and then it's just a matter of selecting eachone of these numbers and changing it to a different number.So I'm selecting all the ones and changing them, of course, to 2 through 8.And now I'll just switch back to my Default tool which Illustrator calls the Selection toolI just call it the Black Arrow tool because after all it is a black arrow.

And that is how you construct a quick and dirty document here in Illustrator.In the next movie, I'll show you how to save your changes.

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Author

Released

6/1/2012

This course is the first in a four-part series by industry-pro Deke McClelland on creating elegant, optimized graphics with the tools in Adobe Illustrator CS6.

This installment covers subjects such as working with shapes and closed paths, including painting, grouping, and coloring, and placing and adjusting type. Deke shows you how to select fonts, create hanging indents, and tweak the kerning and leading of your text. Additional chapters cover drawing and editing paths (and their points) and moving and transforming objects in your artwork.